May 6, 2025 • 53 mins
Mia talks with trans journalists David Forbes, Mira Lazine, and Mady Castigan about how a lack of trans journalism got us here and how it can be supported.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Welcome Dick, it happened here a podcast
about transgender I am your host, Mia Wong. Now, we
have spent a lot of time on this show covering
a bunch of really bad stuff and also got me
some cool stuff. We've had some cool trans things on
this show too. We're gonna have some more in like
(00:22):
the coming weeks. But it is a bleak time to
be trans really anywhere in the world. The United States
is also pretty fucking bad right now. But in the
words of lengths andhes between the darkness and the dawn,
the rises a red star. And one of the things
that has happened as this sort of like you know,
sort of the crisis of transphobia and the crisis of
(00:44):
the genocide and the sort of multiple genocides the government's doing,
and as sort of transphobia as like an institutional state
discourse has like solidified. Is that, I mean, honestly, multiple
generations a trans journalists have really kind of like risen
to the forefront. And yeah, we've we've been We've been
seeing a bunch of extremely cool reporting and a bunch
(01:06):
of very very good work from a bunch of like
more radical trans journalists and that's a thing that kind
of like there's been so few of us for so
long and suddenly.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
There's several and it rips, and I'm really.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Happy about it. And with me to talk about sort
of you know, what trans journalism is like in this moment,
how it functions and you know, and how how how
it can be sustained going forward and why it's sort
of important, is David Forbes, who is the editor of
the Asheville Blade and also an independent journalist. Mirra Lasine,
who is a freelance journalist who recently launched the outlet
(01:41):
Free Radical, and medi Cast Again, who's an independent journalist
and the creator of Maddy cast News. All of you
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Thank you on having me.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, I'm ecstatic to have all of you on to
get to talk about this because I don't know, I
guess the place that I want to start is, like
I I remember this kind of like period in like
twenty twenty four, twenty twenty four, it was like, I mean,
it still is really bleak for trans journalism in a
lot of ways, but like you know, i'man just in
transmedia in general. Like I was just watching like the
(02:15):
space that had been opened a little bit in like
the twenty tens for there to be trans people in media,
just like closing, you know, And like I've been watching
like pretty immediately around me, Like I've been watching the
number of like transferms, especially like non white transferms, just
like disappearing from media. And it was, you know, it
was it was like watching the stars disappear from the sky.
(02:36):
And the thing about the stars disappearing from the sky is,
you know, there's you don't notice it unless you're looking
at them, in which case light has fucking gone forever.
And it was this really really bleak thing. But also
you know, as it's happening, and as we've been sort
of like resisting this, I've been getting to watch like
the stariscope back on in the sky and like watching
new like people emerge and watching people who've been doing
(02:59):
cool work for a really long time sort of like
come out into the open and like get more sort
of national recognition. And yeah, I don't know, I guess,
So I guess that's the sort of place I wanted
to start, is just talking a little bit about like
what it's like to be fucking doing journalism right now.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Because Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I'll go ahead and start. I've been a journalist for
over twenty years. And for those who might be wondering,
since you refer to transfems, I am a transwoman. I
us she they pronounce. I also like the name David
so but I have seen it kind of wax and wane.
I've seen it go up and down, and to some degree,
what we're facing now it is a much worse and
(03:40):
escalating version, but it is also some of what I've
seen trans journalists face period. I came out in publicly
in twenty sixteen. I started my transition in twenty fifteen,
and immediately my freelance career basically died overnight. And it
wasn't like I was writing for you know, right wing
outlets something, And you know, honestly, the fact is, and
(04:03):
this is I think unusual among trans journalism because a
lot of it, admirably focuses on international level stuff because
what we face is so vast. But if it had
not been for the local support, because the Blade, a
lot of the Blades subscribers are local that we certainly
welcome people to subscribe from wherever they are, you know,
I would be homeless. And there's a good chance I
(04:24):
wouldn't be talking to you all right now. But at
the same time, in this kind of what I kind
of call the quiet purge, which I think has been
escalating in recent years that you talked about about, you know,
just we've got trans journalists who used to write for
national magazines leaving out of their cars. Now that is
the reality we face our publications, all working class trans people.
(04:45):
And you know, we've had journalists arrested twice, yeah, oh
my god.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
For doing their jobs.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Two of our journalists were were taken to trial in
twenty twenty three on a minor truspassing charge, which is
almost unheard of in the US as bad as the
USA often is.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
As you mentioned also, this was like trespassing for fucking
reporting on the cops doing an helpless.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
And campit sleep, like on Christmas, yeah yeah, on Christmas.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah yeah, Like I just like unhinged police state shit,
like yeah yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Even in LA you'll like sometimes they'll act like accidentally
a arrest journalist, but then they'll be like, Okay, we'll
let you go because they're a journalists.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
They don't actually take you to trial.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
This is one of those kind of welcome to Ashville
moments because I think people by the marketing sometimes and
think we're this super progressive city and actually it's an
incredibly repressive like tourism Fife, and that's this is kind
of really still point though, Like the city government, city
council here is six Democrats and one kind of like
Bernie Sanders type independent though even more tepid, and the
(05:47):
DA is a Democrat. And still you know, they were
hell bent to persecute trans journalists. Yeah, one of our
one of our journalist until the Bliss was openly mistreated
in gendered based on her gender during that So to
some degree what's happening now is certainly a worsening, but
it is also an extension what's been going on for
(06:09):
a very long time. So okay, like it is getting worse,
I don't know we're going to be in a two, three,
even one year, but also like this is not a
new fight.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Yeah, I can speak to it a little bit too.
I'm I've been a journalist for I guess a lot
last six months because it's a long story, but I
kind of got into it more out of fear for myself.
Sometimes people think I'm selfless, and maybe I am a
little bit, but a lot of it is really selfish
and just feeling like I have to do stuff to
(06:42):
protect myself and my friends basically. But even in that
short period of time, I have faced a lot of
bad stuff from honestly predominantly the left and liberals and
sometimes even though they're queer people being a woman of color,
and that wasn't really initially what I was afraid of,
(07:04):
you know. I was afraid of like I'm going to
get death threats and Nazis, something like fandox being Actually
none of that's happened. I can't really explain why, other
than that I just don't use Twitter, and I guess
so they don't know I exist. But I have like
one of the first national news story that I broke,
or one of them, I guess. So it was about
(07:24):
like Metai being like super racist and I like kind
of figured that out. I like proved that it was racist. Basically,
I just like use my brain to make it tell
on itself and explain it's prompt and all that, and
it became this huge international news story, but it was
like immediately co opted by a Washington Post journalist who
retreated me and then recreated the conversation and posted it again,
(07:49):
and then I had to go on like this week's
long like kind of campaign to try to just get
basic credit for that. And eventually she did credit me
in the column to give her credit, but that was
not something that was forgiven, and a lot of others
that I said the thing to you also didn't credit me.
And that's just been a recurring trend that, uh yeah,
(08:11):
like I'm kind of invisible even though I make a
lot of important years, so that kind of sucks.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah, this is something that happens fucking constantly. I'm like, my, my, like,
welcome to the this this is before I was out too,
and this is also like you know, part of part
of what's going on here is like one of the
things you learned really quickly in media is the extent
to which so much national media is just like what
they do is steal stories from like people like who
are you know from sort of like like more regional
(08:38):
media or people that think they can get away with
taking stuff from like if. And this goes all the
way up the chain, right like if if. If you
want to know what's going to be on Rachel Maddow Show,
look look at what's happening on behind the bastards whenever
they cover someone on the right, and within about three
weeks you will get a Rachel Mattour episode that is
five minutes a thing. But like you know, but like
you know, it's obviously like it'ignificantly worse with like trans people,
(08:58):
because like, yeah, they can just fucking stell stories like
I remember, God my, like my fucking like the first
like journalism well that's not true, but the first journalism
e stuff that I did with like po zone people
was like we were dreaming like the Atlanta Spas shooting.
We tracked down there there's like that there was a
Facebook post that people were circulating reportedly from the shooter
(09:20):
that was like basically blaming like anti China media stuff
for it. And we tracked down that this person did
not have a Facebook and that all of this was fake,
but that that post had been circling into the national
news and we were like, well, yeah, this is like fake, right,
And then like every single news like every single like
CNN fucking Fox News, like every single major news outlet
just like took all of our work and like repackaged
(09:42):
it and then never fucking mentioned that it was like
Garre and I who did this, because you know, why
would you credit the transgender anarchists when you could simply
repackage the story yourself. And this is a problem that's
like goes all the way up to like this is
part of the reason we're here right now, right Like
we're complaining about this on sort of like professional level
because like it's annoying, but also like the reason we're
(10:02):
fucking here right now is because the person who got
to write about trans stuff was fucking Jestison Gull, who
is a sis man whose only qualification it was the
thing he previously wrote about was men who fuck other
men who don't consider themselves gay. And because he was
the person who got to write all of the like
trans coverage, though he's just like some fucking cis dipshit right,
Like he's now the guy who's like been being cited
(10:24):
in fucking legal cases for ages and ages for why
you should restrict trans healthcare.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
The Atlantic and its consequences on society.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Asters Yeah, me, or do you want to talk a
bit about your experience with it?
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Honestly, what you just described has been happening to me
this week. So I've been in the industry for about
three to four years now consistently inconsistently for a little
bit longer. And initially it was way easier for me
to get eggs, Like within the first few months of
(10:58):
me seriously starting, I got up to pitches into Discover
magazine and places like that, and then like but in
like six months after that, it became a nightmare to
get pitches accepted. Yeah, and it just so happened I
became more out as trans I'm not time frame definitely
not a coincidence at all. But more recently, this week
(11:20):
I launched my independent newsletter, The Free Radical.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Go subscribe, You go subscribe. It's it's legitimately great. You
will get reporting there that you won't fucking get well, okay,
you will get recording there that you won't get from
anyone else until about three weeks later, when all the
national out let's pick it up and it will be
better and you will have it first to the person
who actually reported it.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
In every articuar I've written so far, I've taken a
second to basically be like, Okay, here's some anarchists shit
you should read. Y'all. Audiences mostly like libs and I'm
just like here here read this please. But my first
story broke this week was about a trans woman who
was legally held in Guantanamo Bay, and that story got
(12:08):
picked up by a bigger media outlets pretty quick. But
in the first like twelve hours, the news uplet then
did a very good story that basically cited me every
chance they got. Come to find out, this is because
a trans woman wrote that she's awesome. I just followed
her the other day. But then bazillion it was out
started picking up on this.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah, this was a Brazilian trans woman who got like
sent to Guantanamo.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah. And the first one to do this was the
newspaper forgive me if I am mispronouncing this full Hall
dais self Polo. I believe it's called I might be
mispronouncing that. I apologize I am, But they are one
of the biggest newspapers in Brazil and definitely one of
the oldest, and that story was all right, you know,
(12:55):
they credited me sure breaking the story. I was talking
to the person who wrote that she's sweet and you
did original recording it's awesome. And then right after that,
like dozens of other outlets came in. None of them
credited me, and they posted like social media stuff about
the story. Not a single one of those credited me,
(13:16):
and they're getting like thousands of lights and comments and shares,
and most egregious I think is I've seen a few
of them credit the journalist with Fulha as breaking the story,
and have you seen one sank them as breaking the story?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Oh my god, whose article?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Mind you? Literally in a subheading says I broke the
story and I didn't check in on it today yet,
but last night I was like up late just looking
at all the news outlets that was boosting, and it's like,
I'm why the stories getting coverage. Don't get me wrong,
it's an important one. It's just like yeah, no, it's great. Yeah,
(13:58):
Almost none of them are seeing where they got the
story from. It's just like, oh wow, there's this bigger
outlet cover. I'm gonna credit the bigger outlift.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
So to to explain why, we're also sort of concerned
about like the way this attribution stuff works, right, this
is an incredibly material problem for us, right, and like
I am very lucky in that, like in terms of
trans journalism, I have like a stable job. But the
thing is right unless unless you fucking got really lucky
(14:28):
and you got hired like as assis person, and then
you have a bunch of very very supportive like coworkers,
and like your bosses are supportive. You are like trying
to cobble together like every scent that you can possibly
pull out of a fucking couch cushion, because like you know,
I've said this other show before, right, like, if you're
(14:49):
a transperson in the US, even when even before all
the turf tariffs hit, right like you you were living
in the night in like nineteen thirty six, great depression
levels of unemployment, and you know, so so that means that,
like it actually matters a lot when when other outlets
do your studies and don't attribute it to you, because
like you have to find a way to fucking make money,
(15:09):
and like almost all trans journalists are like the most
hideously broke people you've ever heard of in your entire
fucking life. Like and this is also you know, and
this this is also part of the way that like
class plays out in the transmitting you see, is like,
you know, the people with the biggest platforms tend to
be trans people who were already doing okay, because those
(15:30):
are the only people who can afford to fucking do this,
and like that's why most of you have heard of me,
and most of you probably have not heard of David
and Mirror, even though David and Mirror do like quite
frankly more important journalism than I do, and like and
in terms of especially in terms of like like and
like break a lot way more fucking stories than I do,
because it's not kind of like not exactly like my thing, right,
(15:53):
But that's because I was, like, you know, like I
was already sort of like in a place that was
financially secure, and everyone else is so unbelievable fucking broke
all the time, and it matters when fucking stories get
stolen because the only way that if you're a trans
journalist and you're you know, you're working at your own outlet,
because outlet won't fucking hire you because that's just the
way that the fucking media is structured. The only way
(16:14):
for you to get paid is by like people seeing
your stories. And that's part of why there's like just
not that many trans journalists because like the level of
discrimination on top of the kind of like erasire of
independent journalist, it already happens makes it just like financially
impossible to fucking do it.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Yeah, it's it's not just liberal media. It's not just
like the ciss had liberal media too sometimes, Like I
had a similar thing with when I broke the story
of Rain and some other sexual abuse nonprofits submitting all
of the trans people from their websites. That became a
national news story, and the Washington pillst kicked it up also,
(16:56):
and I think part of that was because I complained
so much about the previous time where they almost didn't
cite me, that maybe they were a little bit more
cautious about me, is my theory. But anyway, after that
initial news story that cited me, same thing happened where
it's like everyone's like, oh, well, we can just cite
the Washington Post now, and so this person no one knows.
The first website to do that was like a queer
(17:18):
news outlet, and then I just kept watching as like
I think it was like three or four different queer
or like feminist women focused news outlets did the same
thing of not citing me, And there was even like
a really long piece from this other like that was
it felt like it was going out of its way
not to cite me, because it was talking about this
(17:39):
entire issue about nonprofits censoring people, and that was an
entire conversation that was started specifically because of the news
article I wrote, but it specifically did not cite me,
even though they mentioned how one of the organizations that
I reported on had reversed course, which is something that
they emailed me and said it was because of me.
(17:59):
So that's how well, that's how deep this does. They
will like go out of their way to like carve
you out of a story that exists because of you,
even if they are ostensibly, you know, not just a
liberal like a New York Times outlet, but like a
left wing like progressive facing outlet that's trying to like
reket it stuff like that. They they just want to
exclude trans women from their own stories, even it's kind
(18:21):
of crazy.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Yeah, the extent of it is actually telling of the
local level too. Here the blade Diddle number of reporting,
and we also featured some like really well thought out
in pretty sharp opinion columns, which is one thing we
kind of specializing. So I think you're really good for
like raising issues in the local level about how awful
the Tours and Development Authority is which is this hotel
(18:43):
or cartail that takes every dime of all the local
hotel tax, every bit of it, and then uses it
to market the place to more rich people and push
crackdowns on pretty much everyone else. So we pushed this.
It became a widespread public demand. A lot of organizing
happened around it, and there was zip zilch zero mentioned
that like spurred by investigations and editorials in the Asheville Blade.
(19:07):
Even one of the people who wrote that editorial, who
was a local resident activist who dealt with some tourism stuff,
was literally being quoted the fact she'd written a piece
for the Blade and that you know, was just not mentioned.
And it actually became kind of a running kind of
grim joke because we're all working class trans people and
you know, half of us are transferm is just the
(19:28):
Asheville Blade does not exist. And some of that was
for liberals, but honestly, Asheville has a massive trans misogyny problem,
which think we were the first meet outs to do
like a quick guide to trans misogyny, which we did
kind of like a slide show about it in our
Patreon and stuff, because it was that extensive. But even
the left in Ashville has some real problems with trans misogyny.
So and it's applied everything got just from trans issues,
but even to bread and butter kind of local stuff,
(19:50):
which we also do a lot of reporting on. You know,
it's we can't admit that trans leftists and anarchists are
shaping the discussion in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
It's funny because like like even us, like even like
the podcast it could happen here, which is like a
pretty big national thing, Like there's no one else talks
about us. It's fucking amazing. You could just like see
you can like literally watch like every other podcast that's
like a tenth of our size there's like media coverage
(20:30):
of and there's nothing, and they will never admit that
we fucking did anything.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
It's awesome. It's so cool.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
And I think there's like a conversions of actoracy too,
because like you know, on the one hand, like in
terms of sort of the way that hyper visibility works, right,
hyper visibility for transferms only works negatively, like there's only
the kind of like you get fucked by it. But
then also on top of it, you get the reverse
version of it, where it's like, yeah, you know, your
labor was stolen all and this is you know, this
(20:59):
is true both in movements. This is true of the
way the sort of capitalist media functions. And then on
top of that, we have the kind of like trifecta
of like we will never mention that you exist, which
is trans independent and radical at the same time, and
like this is the thing happens like every fucking trans
(21:20):
fan like journalist like friend of the show Maya Arson
crime w has had this happen to it like a
billion fucking times. I want to talk a bit more
about kind of just like the financials of how this
plays out and how independent media is sort of being
supported in this era because you know, like it's also
(21:41):
really true that like even even the like nominally trans outlets,
like a lot of it functions a labor exploitation. And yeah,
let's let's talk a bit about that.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Like we have a lot of strong cakes.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Seen some shit.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Oh boy, I have so many opinions, So I mentioned
I kind of more formally got to start three to
four years ago. My first article was published in twenty eighteen,
and it was just like a local thing when I
was living in Scranton, Pennsylvania area where bathing happens, but
(22:19):
I found something to report on. The reason I got
started that would have been like early twenty twenty two.
Reason I got started then because I was homeless and
I needed a way to make money, and where I
was living at the time it was a complete job desert.
I didn't have a car and there was nothing in
walking distance to me. The only things that were like
(22:40):
minimum wage food service jobs that over half an hour
walk and my long disabled. My body is in pain
if I stand up too long. So those jobs did
not last long because I physically couldn't. And so I
tried to find something that I could do remotely, more consistently,
and I went all in into freelance writing and journalism.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Real really the money making career.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Oh yeah, I'm totally I'm just in this for the money,
you know. I made such amazing profits that year, which
is why I ended up homeless again and by the
end of the year I was living in a motel.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
God.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
And a lot of the writing I was doing at
that time was very generalist and I hadn't really found
much of my niche yet. But as I began to
zero it more on trains issues over time and just
politics and stuff like that, because as an aside, I
also tried to break into gaming journalism because I unfortunately
(23:43):
am a gamer regredibly such cases, many such cases, and
that industry is just dead. It was dying at that
point and now it's just like, if you want to
get a job as a gaming journalist, you're not gonna
I tried. We need more people to do it, but
it does not pay. So I'm going into vix journalism,
which pays like marginally better, and by marginally better, let
(24:06):
me talk about some of my rates. Oh god, yea
one outlet I've written for pretty consistently go for a while.
To start, it paid me about one hundred bucks an
article flatter rate, and this includes for highly research in
deft reporting articles.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
My god, yeah, this is again like shit that's going
to be stolen by a national outlet in.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Two days, like like and find you. A lot of
these stories took weeks to make and fell for a
hundred bucks, and so I eventually got quote upgraded to
that outlet to doing seventy five a piece, but four
pieces in a month, and so that was great. You
know that two hundred dollars a month for each individually
(24:51):
reported piece that really paid the bills, and eventually it
changed into one fifty a piece for endef reporting pieces
that often took over a month's worth of work to
get going, and I had to meet my deadline or
as they would get really angry at me and and
they would be really dickish. And that was one of
(25:14):
my better experiences, certainly not the best. I've had plenty
of people who were wonderful, who I've written for, and
I've had great times with. But the through line of
all of it, even the places that pay better, they're
for one off stories. They're for things that do not
giving key a source of and com long term. Even
(25:35):
the places that have paid me the best for individual stories,
it's not enough. Not the least of which because you know,
the cost of living is borrible right now, Terris, they're
going show up and oh god, where what the fuck
is happening? But also because none of it's consistent. The
closest to consistent I had was overworking myself by writing
(25:57):
like upwards of like ten articles a week, sometimes upwards
of like five to seven in one day and all
of them being reported and in that and it's not
sustainable doing that, No no, but that's just common. That
is just normal.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's and it's like the sort
of bleak thing about it is your your options are
you have money already, you won the fucking lottery basically,
and like you got a stable position, you work at
a rate that is like genuinely hideous, or you have
(26:37):
a second job, and sometimes it's a lot of these
things combined.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, I think there's a tendency to talk about discrimination
as something that's sort of like abstract or something that's
even just kind of like point of hiring stuff, which
is all true, and like you know, it is like yeah,
like part of the problem with this is that it's
impossible to get like fucking staff positions and like and
like I could say this is like like so I
mean I got hired like as a SIS person, right
(27:05):
and like and like they would have hired me if
I was trans But like that's also just true for
a lot of people, which is that like that's like
the way that you can do it. So like there
is the like front toward discrimination. But then also the
second aspect of it is that like the way that
all of this stuff plays out structurally in the economy
is that you get reduced to sort of contract labor
unless you try to go and go it by yourself.
(27:26):
And because of the incredible just my material financial oppression
of trans people, this is another big part of the
reason why there's just so few, you know, and like
there's there's becoming more, right, and I'm incredibly happy that,
like you know, like.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
I'm fucking talking with three trans journalists. This rules.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
And also the reason is not more of us, which
is important because like sis people trying to cover our
stories is a fucking disaster, like that's how we got here.
But like part of the reason why there's not more
is just that, like it's so difficult to survive doing
this and y you know, and that's also I'm gonna'm
gonna sur this into a minor plug, which is like,
go subscribe to the Asheville Blade, Go subscribe to Free Radical,
(28:03):
Go subscribe to Manicast News, because like literally the difference
between like people being able to have an apartment and
pay their rent or like living in a car is
the amount of support that you get from this stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
That's absolutely true. Yeah, and I should note the you know,
the Blade's a co op. We've been one for half
a decade now, and part of the reason for that
was we'd seen how unfairly like income was treated, just
in the press in general. And also I'm an anarchist,
and while I love being an editor, I don't want
(28:40):
to be a boss. I want to like work with
other people. And it's made us a lot more effective.
I would say we wouldn't exist if we hadn't become
a co op. But also when we do hit a
difficult financial spot and we operate in a shoestring budget,
especially post Helene as sadly a lot of folks have
been driven out of Ashville by the refusal of farious
governments to do anything about rental aid, by the resumption
(29:03):
of like very quick resumption of fvictions, and a lot
of other horrible stuff, Like it's a struggle. We all
are working class folks. We all work of their jobs
and face trans the discrimination, trans misology, and transphobia. So
it's it's difficult. And even with being a co op,
we do the best we can, and we do, unlike
(29:23):
other places, pay freelancers fair rate. But sometimes it's legitimately
difficult to divide up our tiny budget, and at some
points we say, look, we can't cover this right now,
or we have to say okay, yea in some cases
I've done it before. Certainly I'm covering this, but I
am going to literally have to split up payment forward
over multiple months because we just don't have the money
(29:43):
in there. But I feel it does need, it does
need to get out there, and even if those decisions
are made more fairly, it is still a real problem
that we are dividing up us fairly small pool of resources.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
We do a lot with that, but it is a
real limitation. Mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
Yeah. And I'm kind of in a similar boat in
terms of my publication Maddie cast News. So I'm in
one of the categories you mentioned. Actually I'm in two
of them. Where I found what I'm doing not from
my work, but from my first job, my main job.
I guess which I got. I guess pretending to be
assis or maybe you know, non binary BESAM or whatever
(30:22):
and then kind of jump scare them. But anyway, that
job pays pretty well, thankfully, you know, software engineering one
of the of the lottery professions for trans women. You
get your healthcare, you got your money. But I've been
trying to go beyond just me and try to help
other people as well. So recently we just applied for
(30:42):
fiscal sponsorship with five to one C three, which hopefully
hopefully let us become a charity tax deductible and all that.
And I've also been putting a bit of my own money,
and I've also been you know, pretty much begging all
my readers to give us money because one of the
biggest goals of my publication has it kind of started
(31:03):
off more about like, you know, reporting on the news,
of course, but now it's reporting on the news and
also you know, making sure the people who report on
the news aren't holmost actually, maybe that's a bad thing.
Everyone I know in my life knows people like all
these journalists who report on this news, but a lot
of them probably don't even know how much like they suck.
They struggle, just like getting through their daily lives. So
(31:26):
I'm really trying to hopefully create some structure for us
to have at least one nonprofit that will fund trans
journalists at like a living wage of at least you know,
twenty five dollars an hour, which I honestly don't think
is a lot, especially like in a place like La
but twenty five dollars an hour is probably more than
you can get almost anywhere as a trans journalist. Also,
(31:47):
I've heard a lot of jokes about, you know, we're
passing around the same point dollars in the trans community,
and it's a little bit more of that. But I'm
also hoping to see if I can try to fundraise
from other people and try to you know, raise awareness
for this issue because I don't have a lot of
time myself to be writing articles these days, because I
do have a full ten job. But yeah, hoping to
(32:09):
kind of make a dent on this issue and raise awareness.
And it's really a win ran for all trans people
that you know, if we're paying people who need this
money to survive, but they're also creating really important news
coverage that literally is like life changing for hundreds of
thousands of millions of people at many times. And that's
how I see it's an exceptionally important issue that is
(32:32):
completely unaddressed.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
This is also part of the issue with the way
that like trends issues are reported on by the media
is that they're they're largely you know, and it's not
things like healthcare aren't important, right, but like just the
raw class dynamic of all of this just does not
get talked about, right, the homelessness rates that don't. I don't,
(32:54):
actually fuck I should have the homelessness race off top
of my head. Things like three or four times of
the very least more likely across the entire transpopulation to
be homeless than people. And like you can just fucking
see that if you know trans people. It's like, yeah,
fucking everyone's spent a bunch of time being homeless, and like,
(33:15):
you know, that's just the conditions of this. And you
know this is the thing that like, as you the listener,
like it is possible for this. It doesn't have to
fucking be like this. Yeah, like it doesn't. You have
the power in your hands, like to keep people off
the street and like with a roof above their head,
and you could do this by clicking The links in.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
The description.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Are from our co op. Thank you for repeatedly mentioning
that aspect. I think also this does this class nymic
does shape the type of trans coverage you see two
quite a bit. We did sur importing one time on
the city of Ashville spending over a million dollars to
the Salvation Army, which is basically a queer and transphobic cult.
(33:59):
But that piece is reported very differently from if it
had been reported by, say a trans journalist who'd been
very well off their entire lives, you know, because a
lot of us people in our co op have either
been close to or been homeless before, and so we
were able to bring in the experience of knowing that
if you are a trans homeless person, the Salvation Army
(34:20):
isn't letting you in or is one of the worst
possible shelters you can end up in. And that piece
was written and read very differently because we were drawing
from that, from that on the ground experience.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah, on that note, I've I've written so many stories
that have been about just the poverty rates of trans
people and what we've all gone through. I used to
be a daily contributor for LGBTQ Nation. They were one
of the outlooks that I was trying to crank out
as many articles as they could for and the editors
(34:53):
lovely people. There no issues with them, lovely folks. They
just they don't They didn't have enough money to begin
with to pay me enough, so you're goin to do.
But I remember working on a story sometime like the
summer of last year for them where I was I
was writing about some new report that came out talking
(35:15):
about just like poverty rates, job discrimination rates of trans people.
And one thing I've noticed is, like David mentioned, there
is a huge disconnect between even if you have like
wealthier trans people write about an issue versus those who
are in poverty. Like a lot of the sources I
had for a specific article, I don't remember the headline
(35:38):
because I wrote like five hundred or goalster q Nation
last year, but a lot of the sources I used
for that article, and like other ones like it, are
like big nonprofits, And you know, obviously your mileage maybe
very depending on which nonprofit. But most of the folks
who like were writing these reports or who were doing
the press releases and stuff like that, you could just
(36:00):
kind of tell that they maybe did not have quite
the same experiences as say, trans people who have been homeless,
trans people who have had to deprive themselves of medical
care because they couldn't afford it, trans people who have
had to go without food because not enough money. And
it's almost like a lot of people who didn't have
(36:22):
to go through this stuff, like intellectualize it more. They
see it as like these abstract numbers and they know
it's bad, but they don't have that like individual connection.
Like even many of the nonprofit folks, a lot of
their friends, even their social circles are all going to
be on average, you know, I can't say for every
(36:42):
single person, obviously, like on average more wealthy, more stable,
they have family to back them up, they have plenty
of options, and I don't know, rambling a bit, but
there's just a disconnect, you know, whenever reaching out to
folks who won the birth law a little bit.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
One of the most the most expensive article that we
did Maddy cast News earlier last month was about Maryland
prisons and how they're basically torture chambers for trans women,
as most prisons are, but it seems like they're especially
bad in Maryland, you know, despite it being supposedly a
(37:24):
safe trans today you know, seventy percent Democrats. And that
was a kind of an example of just like how unprofitable,
how possible to not just unprofitable, because when you think unprofitable,
it's like, oh, you're not making money. It's not about that.
It's like if you're losing, like eighty percent of the
money you put into these articles because it takes so
many Like I'm a very strong believer of paying people,
(37:47):
you know, a living wage. So I was paying the
journalists like well over twenty five dollars an hour for
you know, dozens of hours of work, and that adds
up really fast. And then court feet, like pacer fees,
all these other costs are adding up and it ends
up being like around the thousand dollars for the single article.
And it's a really important article that you know, raise
(38:08):
a lot of awareness. Everyone in Maryland, in the trans circle,
they're talking about it. But at the same time, it's
basically a charity product, right, This is why I'm trying
to become a nonprofit because there's simply no other way
to be able to fund this stuff. There's no capitalist
model for reporting on trans women in prison. It's not
something that people are you know, like I definitely get
(38:28):
there's a lot of people who support us out of
the goodness of their hearts, and that's really nice, but
even that is not enough, because that's just how it is.
There's just not enough people who care about these issues. Sadly,
especially the more intersectional it is. You know, even a
lot of people in the queer community aren't as wory
necessarily about people in prison. They're more a worried about
people not in prisons. And you know, of course everyone matters,
(38:50):
but I think it's really important to focus on those
most intersectional issues because when you really think about it,
like prisons are basically, you know, where they do every
thing they want to do to transom and aren't in prison.
That's where they get to do all of it, and
no one's looking on, no one's watching them, no one's
holding them accountable. But yeah, I think it's basically a
complete failing of capitalism, Like it's there's definitely be some
(39:13):
outlets that, you know, maybe they could be doing better,
but at the same time, a lot of the time
that's basically, you know, be really shitty. The people are
closed down and neither of those are great options. And
personally I would close down, but I can't tell other
people what to do. And I think really it's a
systemic issue that society doesn't care about us, that the cists,
people who really should be funding these things and trying
(39:34):
to solve these issues, just pretend like we don't exist,
and you know, go out of their way to even
erase our presence even when we do, you know, create
national needs.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
You know, I think part of the difficulty of it, right,
and this is specifically the way the trends that she's
foctioned around class journalism are a microcosm. It's like the
most intense version of the stuff that's happening to the
entire journalism industry, right, or like, you know, part of
what we're seeing is like is just that it's been
the destruction of local news, right, And the product of
this is that the only people who can be journalists
(40:17):
are like a bunch of fucking rich dipshits and you know, like, yeah,
you've all fucking read like New York Times columnist is
like the platforming a genocide denier today, right, like that,
and that's that's sort of the product of this. And
it means that like unless like literally like people like you,
the fucking listener, And I guess this doesn't apply to
(40:38):
you if you're you know, like statistically a good number
of you are like you are also transgender, and you
make like fucking nine dollars an hour like running a
forklift or something like. This is not this is not
on you, like, I know much of you are gonna
be like, holy shit, actually give money these people. It's
like okay, but like this stuff is only possible if
(40:58):
people are actually fucking willing to support it, like until
we can like fundamentally change the way that the entire
political and economic system works in this country and in
this world. And until then, it's like yeah, like it's
this is a fucking problem for like us here too,
because you know, like again, like I got fucking lucky,
Like I am extremely dissimilar, Like I am the transfoman,
(41:19):
like one of the transfomens who you will hear from
the most. And I have like a stable job. I
haven't been homeless, and I haven't done sex work, and
this makes me completely unlike a huge portion of trans people,
especially transferms, right, And yeah, it's like, yeah, it fucking
colors the way I do this shit in ways that
like I don't see because like I haven't had to
like do this shit, and this is a real fucking problem.
(41:41):
The only way that it can not be like this
is if people are actually willing to support the people
who understand these things because they've fucking gone through it,
and so so your options are like all of our
stuff gets reported on by Jesse Singahl and we all
fucking die, or we fund's journalism if we fight them
(42:02):
and we all live in a fucking better world.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
My backup option if trans journalism doesn't work, you mentioned
sexpert is quite literally to write furry smut and hope
that pays.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
The last year, the Asheville Blade marked our tenth anniversary,
So I think I think that is worth mentioning too,
Like I think sometimes things and they truly are precarious,
they truly are difficult in some ways, they're only getting
more precarious and more difficult. But at the same time,
despite our journalists being arrested, despite being kind of like
(42:36):
targeted and ignored by a lot of liberals and even
some leftists in town, we're still here. We're still doing journalism.
We just put out a really powerful investigation about you know,
more yet more mouthfeasance in the police department. So so yeah,
like it can be done. It's not impossible, And as
tight as things are, there is also a lot of
resilience and we do get a lot of very genuine support.
(42:59):
I do think that's worth them sizing two. So, like,
there is strengthen there is some hope here. Yeah, and
you know, and again it's like it's it's not impossible.
It just requires it.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Requires a bunch of fucking work from the trans people
who are doing it. And then also it requires, you know,
putting on my fucking MPR pledge to my voice. It
requires viewers like you to you know, it requires people
to care enough about it to support it and make
it exist. And yeah, I think that's a that's a
(43:28):
kind of good note to start wrapping up. You have
anything else that you want to make sure you get
in before we move too plugs.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
I guess yeah, for me as as I'm also kind
of in that spectrum of like being a little bit
more privileged as far as trans women go financially. And
my message to other people who make especially since if
you're a SIST person you make over one hundred thousand dollars,
you're comfortable and you're feeling bad listening to this, you know,
go give a trans person money, Go give my relizine
(43:59):
my go give David Forbes money, like we have to.
We really need everyone to start pitching in, especially people
who aren't trends, and we really need like it's it's
literally life saving the money. Like and I think one
thing to consider is, you know, one thousand dollars to
someone who makes a lot of money is completely different
from one thousand dollars to someone who is like a
(44:21):
month away from being homeless.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
And twenty dollars functions like.
Speaker 4 (44:24):
That, Like yeah, twenty dollars is then like no, I
know so many people like one thousand dollars, like they'll go,
they'll spend a thousand dollars in a couple of weeks
on restaurants, right, And then there's people there's trans people
with a thousand dollars it's like change their life forever.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
To look on your's face, like the.
Speaker 4 (44:46):
No, there's people who spend and I don't even do
twenty thousand dollars a year on sushi having worked in
the service industry, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
I feel bad when I spend like twenty bucks on
Popeyes once a week, Like yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
So if you spend twenty thousand dollars a year on
two if you please spend nineteen thousand dollars a year
this year and said and give one thousand dollars to transperson.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
That's my advice for you.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Double the income of a transperson today. This is also like,
you know, part of what I was talking about with
like the Great Depression, Like we don't live in the
same economy that everyone else does, Like it is literally
a different fucking world. And the more fucked you are,
like down the fucking scale of like of like trans poverty,
the more it's like you literally like the reality that
(45:33):
like the people live in is just completely alien to you.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
It's like, what the fuck I want that kind of money?
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Fuck, you're a David Diah. Do you have anything else
that you want to say before you like wrap up?
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Please support trend journalists, please, dear God, Please, everyone I
know who is primarily a journalist for work is broke.
Need the money please toar God.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
Yeah I would, yeah, add to that. But another thing is, look,
uhould support trans journals because trans people deserve to, you know,
to be supported and to be able to make a living. Also, frankly,
we're really good at this, like generally as a whole,
like we have a lot more perspective I think on
how this healthscape social structure actually does and doesn't work,
(46:28):
and a lot more determination to actually tell the truth
in general, and so you know, dollars to the actual
blade for example, or to or Tamra or too maddicast,
Like they go to journalism. You know, they're not going
to like some baroque hierarchy of you know, of gentry
(46:48):
administrators or something or CEOs.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Like it goes to journalism.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
It goes to actual interesting reporting and views and things
that need to be said. So if people are even
just looking, if it's some journalism is something they care
about or think it needs to be stronger, this is
the way to do it.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Yeah, And like, like this is also a directly political
thing because like the word that you'll do, Like I
have literally watched it change the sort of political landscape.
Like that's just like a thing that happens, you know,
Like and I think we're all we're all very cynical
about sort of the power of like the truth to
do anything because it requires people to act on it.
But you know, if you don't know anything is happening,
(47:27):
it is not possible to act on something. Yeah, So,
like you know, you are simultaneously you are supporting, like
you are supporting trans people in like the most vicarious
position we've been in in fucking ages. You are like
supporting your supporting journalism. And you are not even poking
a stick. You are helping build a lance to like
stab into the side of the people who are like
(47:49):
destroying this world. And yeah, I think that's fucking important.
So if people want to support you, where do they go?
Where do they go?
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Go?
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Go, go go.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Yeah. So if you want to support me, go to
the Free radical dot org. That that that is my newsletter.
There's stuff to subscribe and and and give money. You
can do a free subscription, you know, especially for broke,
please do a free subscription, like we don't. I don't
need your twenty dollars. I'll give you my twenty dollars please.
(48:21):
And also I have a cofi if you know, need
to like a one time saying, it's mirror Lusine. I'm
the only one only mirrors and Losine on there. And
if you subscribe, you're supporting some of the only trans
anarchist national news coverage. Basically in every single article I write,
(48:41):
I try to find a way to shoot order anarchist
theory and what fucking I'm sucking. Like my first article,
I was like, hey, go check out crime thing, the
one who one I published yesterday. I just I went
on a whole like page long tangent where I'm like, okay, cool,
so this is what more liberal people are saying. But
go read Lorenzo O. Kombola Irvin, go read queryan anarchism,
(49:04):
Go read this shit, and yeah that's I just want
to shoehorn anarchist theory and get more people will be anarchists.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (49:13):
Yeah, So if you ever want to support maddiecast News,
to be clear, I don't take any income from the website,
actually having plant plans to put lots of money into it,
but all of your money will be going towards supporting
other trends journalists, So that's one way to contribute to
the cause. So or even if you just give me
your email, I appreciate that too. But my website is
(49:36):
maddiecast dot com and that's only one b So m
a d y cast dot com and round bluebliskuy too
with the same same website named and yeah, thank you.
People can find our co ops work at Ashville Blade
dot com and there's a giant link to our Patreon there.
For fifteen bucks a month, you can get a lovely
(49:56):
Gentry Tears mug, which we're particularly proud.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
Of it, so cool it rules.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
Thank you for the endorsement, And at the end of
each article we have addition to our Patreon a link
if folks just want to send us some one time support,
we'll certainly put that to use as well, and if
they would like to see some of my personal writings
about trans survival as well as some anarchists looks at
various periods of history Patreon dot com slash David Forbes
(50:26):
if if that is, if that is more of their
cup of tea.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
Satistically in our audience, I know there are a bunch
of you whose special interest either is or could be
medieval peasant uprisings. You were not going to find better
writing on medieval peasant up risings anywhere else. Yes, there
is a limit to the extent to which you can
actually talk about the structural problems that are happening, and
you can't fucking talk about how to solve them. And
(50:49):
this is also partially why I have a cogul journalists
like I kind of jokingly refuse to call myself a
journalist because, like I, fucking I refuse to be associated
with like all of those goddamn Atlantic mother fuckers who
institutional jobs to endanger trans people, like you know.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
But also around of fascist though that's.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
True, that's true, yeah, you know, because it's like we're
the ones actually fucking doing this shit. But also yeah,
like this is you know, to do my one, to
do my one Karl Marx quote. It's like, you know,
philosophy has hitherto only sought to describe the world. The
point is to change it. And that's a thing that
we could that like, we like have the power to
collectively do together. And that's something that like the New
(51:29):
York Times does not want you to know that you
can change things.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Now, Yeah, they to borrow a trem David has recently
gotten into my vocabulary. A bunch the gentry really fucking
do not like the idea of solutions. Their idea of
a solution is go vote for Pete Boudage egg, go
sign the Acal Years petition.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Yeah, I want, I want to read this this fucking
post that I saw for at Kencher Rights about the
New York Times. I think a lot about the top
New York Times editor who I told the historians were
warning were in a similar period to the ramp up
to the Holocaust, And maybe we could look back and
see what NYT had done wrong to not repeat his mistakes.
He shrugged, New York Times didn't really cover the Holocaust.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Oh my god, what, So don't support these people, support
the people who actually.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Do this shit, you know, like I.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
Go, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make a cut of comparison.
But it was like, at the time this shit was happening,
there was a bunch of very good coverage of the Holocaust,
of what was happening, but it was because it was
all happening from fucking like, because it was like largely
Jewish radicals who were doing it, All that shit fucking
got ignored, and shit that could have been fucking prevented wasn't.
And we don't have to live in a world where
(52:43):
that shit fucking happens, and we can make it not
be like that. But like the structural, the structural like
structural dature of the media is one of the ways
that this fucking happens. And we don't have to let
the New York Times do this again.
Speaker 3 (52:56):
No, And that's a good reminder there is another way
with journalism, you know. Ida Welles was able to detail
the extent and horror of American segregation and lynching, and
also called for people to shoot the clan. Yeah, this
is the you know, the modern idea that you have
to be detached, inevitably attached from pretty gentry perspective.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
You know, there's a world elsewhere, there's other ways to
do things.
Speaker 5 (53:22):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for it could Happen here, listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Cool Zone Media. Welcome Dick, it happened here a podcast
about transgender I am your host, Mia Wong. Now, we
have spent a lot of time on this show covering
a bunch of really bad stuff and also got me
some cool stuff. We've had some cool trans things on
this show too. We're gonna have some more in like
(00:22):
the coming weeks. But it is a bleak time to
be trans really anywhere in the world. The United States
is also pretty fucking bad right now. But in the
words of lengths andhes between the darkness and the dawn,
the rises a red star. And one of the things
that has happened as this sort of like you know,
sort of the crisis of transphobia and the crisis of
(00:44):
the genocide and the sort of multiple genocides the government's doing,
and as sort of transphobia as like an institutional state
discourse has like solidified. Is that, I mean, honestly, multiple
generations a trans journalists have really kind of like risen
to the forefront. And yeah, we've we've been We've been
seeing a bunch of extremely cool reporting and a bunch
(01:06):
of very very good work from a bunch of like
more radical trans journalists and that's a thing that kind
of like there's been so few of us for so
long and suddenly.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
There's several and it rips, and I'm really.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Happy about it. And with me to talk about sort
of you know, what trans journalism is like in this moment,
how it functions and you know, and how how how
it can be sustained going forward and why it's sort
of important, is David Forbes, who is the editor of
the Asheville Blade and also an independent journalist. Mirra Lasine,
who is a freelance journalist who recently launched the outlet
(01:41):
Free Radical, and medi Cast Again, who's an independent journalist
and the creator of Maddy cast News. All of you
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Thank you on having me.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, I'm ecstatic to have all of you on to
get to talk about this because I don't know, I
guess the place that I want to start is, like
I I remember this kind of like period in like
twenty twenty four, twenty twenty four, it was like, I mean,
it still is really bleak for trans journalism in a
lot of ways, but like you know, i'man just in
transmedia in general. Like I was just watching like the
(02:15):
space that had been opened a little bit in like
the twenty tens for there to be trans people in media,
just like closing, you know, And like I've been watching
like pretty immediately around me, Like I've been watching the
number of like transferms, especially like non white transferms, just
like disappearing from media. And it was, you know, it
was it was like watching the stars disappear from the sky.
(02:36):
And the thing about the stars disappearing from the sky is,
you know, there's you don't notice it unless you're looking
at them, in which case light has fucking gone forever.
And it was this really really bleak thing. But also
you know, as it's happening, and as we've been sort
of like resisting this, I've been getting to watch like
the stariscope back on in the sky and like watching
new like people emerge and watching people who've been doing
(02:59):
cool work for a really long time sort of like
come out into the open and like get more sort
of national recognition. And yeah, I don't know, I guess,
So I guess that's the sort of place I wanted
to start, is just talking a little bit about like
what it's like to be fucking doing journalism right now.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Because Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I'll go ahead and start. I've been a journalist for
over twenty years. And for those who might be wondering,
since you refer to transfems, I am a transwoman. I
us she they pronounce. I also like the name David
so but I have seen it kind of wax and wane.
I've seen it go up and down, and to some degree,
what we're facing now it is a much worse and
(03:40):
escalating version, but it is also some of what I've
seen trans journalists face period. I came out in publicly
in twenty sixteen. I started my transition in twenty fifteen,
and immediately my freelance career basically died overnight. And it
wasn't like I was writing for you know, right wing
outlets something, And you know, honestly, the fact is, and
(04:03):
this is I think unusual among trans journalism because a
lot of it, admirably focuses on international level stuff because
what we face is so vast. But if it had
not been for the local support, because the Blade, a
lot of the Blades subscribers are local that we certainly
welcome people to subscribe from wherever they are, you know,
I would be homeless. And there's a good chance I
(04:24):
wouldn't be talking to you all right now. But at
the same time, in this kind of what I kind
of call the quiet purge, which I think has been
escalating in recent years that you talked about about, you know,
just we've got trans journalists who used to write for
national magazines leaving out of their cars. Now that is
the reality we face our publications, all working class trans people.
(04:45):
And you know, we've had journalists arrested twice, yeah, oh
my god.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
For doing their jobs.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Two of our journalists were were taken to trial in
twenty twenty three on a minor truspassing charge, which is
almost unheard of in the US as bad as the
USA often is.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
As you mentioned also, this was like trespassing for fucking
reporting on the cops doing an helpless.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
And campit sleep, like on Christmas, yeah yeah, on Christmas.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah yeah, Like I just like unhinged police state shit,
like yeah yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Even in LA you'll like sometimes they'll act like accidentally
a arrest journalist, but then they'll be like, Okay, we'll
let you go because they're a journalists.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
They don't actually take you to trial.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
This is one of those kind of welcome to Ashville
moments because I think people by the marketing sometimes and
think we're this super progressive city and actually it's an
incredibly repressive like tourism Fife, and that's this is kind
of really still point though, Like the city government, city
council here is six Democrats and one kind of like
Bernie Sanders type independent though even more tepid, and the
(05:47):
DA is a Democrat. And still you know, they were
hell bent to persecute trans journalists. Yeah, one of our
one of our journalist until the Bliss was openly mistreated
in gendered based on her gender during that So to
some degree what's happening now is certainly a worsening, but
it is also an extension what's been going on for
(06:09):
a very long time. So okay, like it is getting worse,
I don't know we're going to be in a two, three,
even one year, but also like this is not a
new fight.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Yeah, I can speak to it a little bit too.
I'm I've been a journalist for I guess a lot
last six months because it's a long story, but I
kind of got into it more out of fear for myself.
Sometimes people think I'm selfless, and maybe I am a
little bit, but a lot of it is really selfish
and just feeling like I have to do stuff to
(06:42):
protect myself and my friends basically. But even in that
short period of time, I have faced a lot of
bad stuff from honestly predominantly the left and liberals and
sometimes even though they're queer people being a woman of color,
and that wasn't really initially what I was afraid of,
(07:04):
you know. I was afraid of like I'm going to
get death threats and Nazis, something like fandox being Actually
none of that's happened. I can't really explain why, other
than that I just don't use Twitter, and I guess
so they don't know I exist. But I have like
one of the first national news story that I broke,
or one of them, I guess. So it was about
(07:24):
like Metai being like super racist and I like kind
of figured that out. I like proved that it was racist. Basically,
I just like use my brain to make it tell
on itself and explain it's prompt and all that, and
it became this huge international news story, but it was
like immediately co opted by a Washington Post journalist who
retreated me and then recreated the conversation and posted it again,
(07:49):
and then I had to go on like this week's
long like kind of campaign to try to just get
basic credit for that. And eventually she did credit me
in the column to give her credit, but that was
not something that was forgiven, and a lot of others
that I said the thing to you also didn't credit me.
And that's just been a recurring trend that, uh yeah,
(08:11):
like I'm kind of invisible even though I make a
lot of important years, so that kind of sucks.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah, this is something that happens fucking constantly. I'm like, my, my, like,
welcome to the this this is before I was out too,
and this is also like you know, part of part
of what's going on here is like one of the
things you learned really quickly in media is the extent
to which so much national media is just like what
they do is steal stories from like people like who
are you know from sort of like like more regional
(08:38):
media or people that think they can get away with
taking stuff from like if. And this goes all the
way up the chain, right like if if. If you
want to know what's going to be on Rachel Maddow Show,
look look at what's happening on behind the bastards whenever
they cover someone on the right, and within about three
weeks you will get a Rachel Mattour episode that is
five minutes a thing. But like you know, but like
you know, it's obviously like it'ignificantly worse with like trans people,
(08:58):
because like, yeah, they can just fucking stell stories like
I remember, God my, like my fucking like the first
like journalism well that's not true, but the first journalism
e stuff that I did with like po zone people
was like we were dreaming like the Atlanta Spas shooting.
We tracked down there there's like that there was a
Facebook post that people were circulating reportedly from the shooter
(09:20):
that was like basically blaming like anti China media stuff
for it. And we tracked down that this person did
not have a Facebook and that all of this was fake,
but that that post had been circling into the national
news and we were like, well, yeah, this is like fake, right,
And then like every single news like every single like
CNN fucking Fox News, like every single major news outlet
just like took all of our work and like repackaged
(09:42):
it and then never fucking mentioned that it was like
Garre and I who did this, because you know, why
would you credit the transgender anarchists when you could simply
repackage the story yourself. And this is a problem that's
like goes all the way up to like this is
part of the reason we're here right now, right Like
we're complaining about this on sort of like professional level
because like it's annoying, but also like the reason we're
(10:02):
fucking here right now is because the person who got
to write about trans stuff was fucking Jestison Gull, who
is a sis man whose only qualification it was the
thing he previously wrote about was men who fuck other
men who don't consider themselves gay. And because he was
the person who got to write all of the like
trans coverage, though he's just like some fucking cis dipshit right,
Like he's now the guy who's like been being cited
(10:24):
in fucking legal cases for ages and ages for why
you should restrict trans healthcare.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
The Atlantic and its consequences on society.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Asters Yeah, me, or do you want to talk a
bit about your experience with it?
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Honestly, what you just described has been happening to me
this week. So I've been in the industry for about
three to four years now consistently inconsistently for a little
bit longer. And initially it was way easier for me
to get eggs, Like within the first few months of
(10:58):
me seriously starting, I got up to pitches into Discover
magazine and places like that, and then like but in
like six months after that, it became a nightmare to
get pitches accepted. Yeah, and it just so happened I
became more out as trans I'm not time frame definitely
not a coincidence at all. But more recently, this week
(11:20):
I launched my independent newsletter, The Free Radical.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Go subscribe, You go subscribe. It's it's legitimately great. You
will get reporting there that you won't fucking get well, okay,
you will get recording there that you won't get from
anyone else until about three weeks later, when all the
national out let's pick it up and it will be
better and you will have it first to the person
who actually reported it.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
In every articuar I've written so far, I've taken a
second to basically be like, Okay, here's some anarchists shit
you should read. Y'all. Audiences mostly like libs and I'm
just like here here read this please. But my first
story broke this week was about a trans woman who
was legally held in Guantanamo Bay, and that story got
(12:08):
picked up by a bigger media outlets pretty quick. But
in the first like twelve hours, the news uplet then
did a very good story that basically cited me every
chance they got. Come to find out, this is because
a trans woman wrote that she's awesome. I just followed
her the other day. But then bazillion it was out
started picking up on this.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah, this was a Brazilian trans woman who got like
sent to Guantanamo.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah. And the first one to do this was the
newspaper forgive me if I am mispronouncing this full Hall
dais self Polo. I believe it's called I might be
mispronouncing that. I apologize I am, But they are one
of the biggest newspapers in Brazil and definitely one of
the oldest, and that story was all right, you know,
(12:55):
they credited me sure breaking the story. I was talking
to the person who wrote that she's sweet and you
did original recording it's awesome. And then right after that,
like dozens of other outlets came in. None of them
credited me, and they posted like social media stuff about
the story. Not a single one of those credited me,
(13:16):
and they're getting like thousands of lights and comments and shares,
and most egregious I think is I've seen a few
of them credit the journalist with Fulha as breaking the story,
and have you seen one sank them as breaking the story?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Oh my god, whose article?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Mind you? Literally in a subheading says I broke the
story and I didn't check in on it today yet,
but last night I was like up late just looking
at all the news outlets that was boosting, and it's like,
I'm why the stories getting coverage. Don't get me wrong,
it's an important one. It's just like yeah, no, it's great. Yeah,
(13:58):
Almost none of them are seeing where they got the
story from. It's just like, oh wow, there's this bigger
outlet cover. I'm gonna credit the bigger outlift.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
So to to explain why, we're also sort of concerned
about like the way this attribution stuff works, right, this
is an incredibly material problem for us, right, and like
I am very lucky in that, like in terms of
trans journalism, I have like a stable job. But the
thing is right unless unless you fucking got really lucky
(14:28):
and you got hired like as assis person, and then
you have a bunch of very very supportive like coworkers,
and like your bosses are supportive. You are like trying
to cobble together like every scent that you can possibly
pull out of a fucking couch cushion, because like you know,
I've said this other show before, right, like, if you're
(14:49):
a transperson in the US, even when even before all
the turf tariffs hit, right like you you were living
in the night in like nineteen thirty six, great depression
levels of unemployment, and you know, so so that means that,
like it actually matters a lot when when other outlets
do your studies and don't attribute it to you, because
like you have to find a way to fucking make money,
(15:09):
and like almost all trans journalists are like the most
hideously broke people you've ever heard of in your entire
fucking life. Like and this is also you know, and
this this is also part of the way that like
class plays out in the transmitting you see, is like,
you know, the people with the biggest platforms tend to
be trans people who were already doing okay, because those
(15:30):
are the only people who can afford to fucking do this,
and like that's why most of you have heard of me,
and most of you probably have not heard of David
and Mirror, even though David and Mirror do like quite
frankly more important journalism than I do, and like and
in terms of especially in terms of like like and
like break a lot way more fucking stories than I do,
because it's not kind of like not exactly like my thing, right,
(15:53):
But that's because I was, like, you know, like I
was already sort of like in a place that was
financially secure, and everyone else is so unbelievable fucking broke
all the time, and it matters when fucking stories get
stolen because the only way that if you're a trans
journalist and you're you know, you're working at your own outlet,
because outlet won't fucking hire you because that's just the
way that the fucking media is structured. The only way
(16:14):
for you to get paid is by like people seeing
your stories. And that's part of why there's like just
not that many trans journalists because like the level of
discrimination on top of the kind of like erasire of
independent journalist, it already happens makes it just like financially
impossible to fucking do it.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Yeah, it's it's not just liberal media. It's not just
like the ciss had liberal media too sometimes, Like I
had a similar thing with when I broke the story
of Rain and some other sexual abuse nonprofits submitting all
of the trans people from their websites. That became a
national news story, and the Washington pillst kicked it up also,
(16:56):
and I think part of that was because I complained
so much about the previous time where they almost didn't
cite me, that maybe they were a little bit more
cautious about me, is my theory. But anyway, after that
initial news story that cited me, same thing happened where
it's like everyone's like, oh, well, we can just cite
the Washington Post now, and so this person no one knows.
The first website to do that was like a queer
(17:18):
news outlet, and then I just kept watching as like
I think it was like three or four different queer
or like feminist women focused news outlets did the same
thing of not citing me, And there was even like
a really long piece from this other like that was
it felt like it was going out of its way
not to cite me, because it was talking about this
(17:39):
entire issue about nonprofits censoring people, and that was an
entire conversation that was started specifically because of the news
article I wrote, but it specifically did not cite me,
even though they mentioned how one of the organizations that
I reported on had reversed course, which is something that
they emailed me and said it was because of me.
(17:59):
So that's how well, that's how deep this does. They
will like go out of their way to like carve
you out of a story that exists because of you,
even if they are ostensibly, you know, not just a
liberal like a New York Times outlet, but like a
left wing like progressive facing outlet that's trying to like
reket it stuff like that. They they just want to
exclude trans women from their own stories, even it's kind
(18:21):
of crazy.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Yeah, the extent of it is actually telling of the
local level too. Here the blade Diddle number of reporting,
and we also featured some like really well thought out
in pretty sharp opinion columns, which is one thing we
kind of specializing. So I think you're really good for
like raising issues in the local level about how awful
the Tours and Development Authority is which is this hotel
(18:43):
or cartail that takes every dime of all the local
hotel tax, every bit of it, and then uses it
to market the place to more rich people and push
crackdowns on pretty much everyone else. So we pushed this.
It became a widespread public demand. A lot of organizing
happened around it, and there was zip zilch zero mentioned
that like spurred by investigations and editorials in the Asheville Blade.
(19:07):
Even one of the people who wrote that editorial, who
was a local resident activist who dealt with some tourism stuff,
was literally being quoted the fact she'd written a piece
for the Blade and that you know, was just not mentioned.
And it actually became kind of a running kind of
grim joke because we're all working class trans people and
you know, half of us are transferm is just the
(19:28):
Asheville Blade does not exist. And some of that was
for liberals, but honestly, Asheville has a massive trans misogyny problem,
which think we were the first meet outs to do
like a quick guide to trans misogyny, which we did
kind of like a slide show about it in our
Patreon and stuff, because it was that extensive. But even
the left in Ashville has some real problems with trans misogyny.
So and it's applied everything got just from trans issues,
but even to bread and butter kind of local stuff,
(19:50):
which we also do a lot of reporting on. You know,
it's we can't admit that trans leftists and anarchists are
shaping the discussion in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
It's funny because like like even us, like even like
the podcast it could happen here, which is like a
pretty big national thing, Like there's no one else talks
about us. It's fucking amazing. You could just like see
you can like literally watch like every other podcast that's
like a tenth of our size there's like media coverage
(20:30):
of and there's nothing, and they will never admit that
we fucking did anything.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
It's awesome. It's so cool.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
And I think there's like a conversions of actoracy too,
because like you know, on the one hand, like in
terms of sort of the way that hyper visibility works, right,
hyper visibility for transferms only works negatively, like there's only
the kind of like you get fucked by it. But
then also on top of it, you get the reverse
version of it, where it's like, yeah, you know, your
labor was stolen all and this is you know, this
(20:59):
is true both in movements. This is true of the
way the sort of capitalist media functions. And then on
top of that, we have the kind of like trifecta
of like we will never mention that you exist, which
is trans independent and radical at the same time, and
like this is the thing happens like every fucking trans
(21:20):
fan like journalist like friend of the show Maya Arson
crime w has had this happen to it like a
billion fucking times. I want to talk a bit more
about kind of just like the financials of how this
plays out and how independent media is sort of being
supported in this era because you know, like it's also
(21:41):
really true that like even even the like nominally trans outlets,
like a lot of it functions a labor exploitation. And yeah,
let's let's talk a bit about that.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Like we have a lot of strong cakes.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Seen some shit.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Oh boy, I have so many opinions, So I mentioned
I kind of more formally got to start three to
four years ago. My first article was published in twenty eighteen,
and it was just like a local thing when I
was living in Scranton, Pennsylvania area where bathing happens, but
(22:19):
I found something to report on. The reason I got
started that would have been like early twenty twenty two.
Reason I got started then because I was homeless and
I needed a way to make money, and where I
was living at the time it was a complete job desert.
I didn't have a car and there was nothing in
walking distance to me. The only things that were like
(22:40):
minimum wage food service jobs that over half an hour
walk and my long disabled. My body is in pain
if I stand up too long. So those jobs did
not last long because I physically couldn't. And so I
tried to find something that I could do remotely, more consistently,
and I went all in into freelance writing and journalism.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Real really the money making career.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Oh yeah, I'm totally I'm just in this for the money,
you know. I made such amazing profits that year, which
is why I ended up homeless again and by the
end of the year I was living in a motel.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
God.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
And a lot of the writing I was doing at
that time was very generalist and I hadn't really found
much of my niche yet. But as I began to
zero it more on trains issues over time and just
politics and stuff like that, because as an aside, I
also tried to break into gaming journalism because I unfortunately
(23:43):
am a gamer regredibly such cases, many such cases, and
that industry is just dead. It was dying at that
point and now it's just like, if you want to
get a job as a gaming journalist, you're not gonna
I tried. We need more people to do it, but
it does not pay. So I'm going into vix journalism,
which pays like marginally better, and by marginally better, let
(24:06):
me talk about some of my rates. Oh god, yea
one outlet I've written for pretty consistently go for a while.
To start, it paid me about one hundred bucks an
article flatter rate, and this includes for highly research in
deft reporting articles.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
My god, yeah, this is again like shit that's going
to be stolen by a national outlet in.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Two days, like like and find you. A lot of
these stories took weeks to make and fell for a
hundred bucks, and so I eventually got quote upgraded to
that outlet to doing seventy five a piece, but four
pieces in a month, and so that was great. You
know that two hundred dollars a month for each individually
(24:51):
reported piece that really paid the bills, and eventually it
changed into one fifty a piece for endef reporting pieces
that often took over a month's worth of work to
get going, and I had to meet my deadline or
as they would get really angry at me and and
they would be really dickish. And that was one of
(25:14):
my better experiences, certainly not the best. I've had plenty
of people who were wonderful, who I've written for, and
I've had great times with. But the through line of
all of it, even the places that pay better, they're
for one off stories. They're for things that do not
giving key a source of and com long term. Even
(25:35):
the places that have paid me the best for individual stories,
it's not enough. Not the least of which because you know,
the cost of living is borrible right now, Terris, they're
going show up and oh god, where what the fuck
is happening? But also because none of it's consistent. The
closest to consistent I had was overworking myself by writing
(25:57):
like upwards of like ten articles a week, sometimes upwards
of like five to seven in one day and all
of them being reported and in that and it's not
sustainable doing that, No no, but that's just common. That
is just normal.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's and it's like the sort
of bleak thing about it is your your options are
you have money already, you won the fucking lottery basically,
and like you got a stable position, you work at
a rate that is like genuinely hideous, or you have
(26:37):
a second job, and sometimes it's a lot of these
things combined.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, I think there's a tendency to talk about discrimination
as something that's sort of like abstract or something that's
even just kind of like point of hiring stuff, which
is all true, and like you know, it is like yeah,
like part of the problem with this is that it's
impossible to get like fucking staff positions and like and
like I could say this is like like so I
mean I got hired like as a SIS person, right
(27:05):
and like and like they would have hired me if
I was trans But like that's also just true for
a lot of people, which is that like that's like
the way that you can do it. So like there
is the like front toward discrimination. But then also the
second aspect of it is that like the way that
all of this stuff plays out structurally in the economy
is that you get reduced to sort of contract labor
unless you try to go and go it by yourself.
(27:26):
And because of the incredible just my material financial oppression
of trans people, this is another big part of the
reason why there's just so few, you know, and like
there's there's becoming more, right, and I'm incredibly happy that,
like you know, like.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
I'm fucking talking with three trans journalists. This rules.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
And also the reason is not more of us, which
is important because like sis people trying to cover our
stories is a fucking disaster, like that's how we got here.
But like part of the reason why there's not more
is just that, like it's so difficult to survive doing
this and y you know, and that's also I'm gonna'm
gonna sur this into a minor plug, which is like,
go subscribe to the Asheville Blade, Go subscribe to Free Radical,
(28:03):
Go subscribe to Manicast News, because like literally the difference
between like people being able to have an apartment and
pay their rent or like living in a car is
the amount of support that you get from this stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
That's absolutely true. Yeah, and I should note the you know,
the Blade's a co op. We've been one for half
a decade now, and part of the reason for that
was we'd seen how unfairly like income was treated, just
in the press in general. And also I'm an anarchist,
and while I love being an editor, I don't want
(28:40):
to be a boss. I want to like work with
other people. And it's made us a lot more effective.
I would say we wouldn't exist if we hadn't become
a co op. But also when we do hit a
difficult financial spot and we operate in a shoestring budget,
especially post Helene as sadly a lot of folks have
been driven out of Ashville by the refusal of farious
governments to do anything about rental aid, by the resumption
(29:03):
of like very quick resumption of fvictions, and a lot
of other horrible stuff, Like it's a struggle. We all
are working class folks. We all work of their jobs
and face trans the discrimination, trans misology, and transphobia. So
it's it's difficult. And even with being a co op,
we do the best we can, and we do, unlike
(29:23):
other places, pay freelancers fair rate. But sometimes it's legitimately
difficult to divide up our tiny budget, and at some
points we say, look, we can't cover this right now,
or we have to say okay, yea in some cases
I've done it before. Certainly I'm covering this, but I
am going to literally have to split up payment forward
over multiple months because we just don't have the money
(29:43):
in there. But I feel it does need, it does
need to get out there, and even if those decisions
are made more fairly, it is still a real problem
that we are dividing up us fairly small pool of resources.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
We do a lot with that, but it is a
real limitation. Mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
Yeah. And I'm kind of in a similar boat in
terms of my publication Maddie cast News. So I'm in
one of the categories you mentioned. Actually I'm in two
of them. Where I found what I'm doing not from
my work, but from my first job, my main job.
I guess which I got. I guess pretending to be
assis or maybe you know, non binary BESAM or whatever
(30:22):
and then kind of jump scare them. But anyway, that
job pays pretty well, thankfully, you know, software engineering one
of the of the lottery professions for trans women. You
get your healthcare, you got your money. But I've been
trying to go beyond just me and try to help
other people as well. So recently we just applied for
(30:42):
fiscal sponsorship with five to one C three, which hopefully
hopefully let us become a charity tax deductible and all that.
And I've also been putting a bit of my own money,
and I've also been you know, pretty much begging all
my readers to give us money because one of the
biggest goals of my publication has it kind of started
(31:03):
off more about like, you know, reporting on the news,
of course, but now it's reporting on the news and
also you know, making sure the people who report on
the news aren't holmost actually, maybe that's a bad thing.
Everyone I know in my life knows people like all
these journalists who report on this news, but a lot
of them probably don't even know how much like they suck.
They struggle, just like getting through their daily lives. So
(31:26):
I'm really trying to hopefully create some structure for us
to have at least one nonprofit that will fund trans
journalists at like a living wage of at least you know,
twenty five dollars an hour, which I honestly don't think
is a lot, especially like in a place like La
but twenty five dollars an hour is probably more than
you can get almost anywhere as a trans journalist. Also,
(31:47):
I've heard a lot of jokes about, you know, we're
passing around the same point dollars in the trans community,
and it's a little bit more of that. But I'm
also hoping to see if I can try to fundraise
from other people and try to you know, raise awareness
for this issue because I don't have a lot of
time myself to be writing articles these days, because I
do have a full ten job. But yeah, hoping to
(32:09):
kind of make a dent on this issue and raise awareness.
And it's really a win ran for all trans people
that you know, if we're paying people who need this
money to survive, but they're also creating really important news
coverage that literally is like life changing for hundreds of
thousands of millions of people at many times. And that's
how I see it's an exceptionally important issue that is
(32:32):
completely unaddressed.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
This is also part of the issue with the way
that like trends issues are reported on by the media
is that they're they're largely you know, and it's not
things like healthcare aren't important, right, but like just the
raw class dynamic of all of this just does not
get talked about, right, the homelessness rates that don't. I don't,
(32:54):
actually fuck I should have the homelessness race off top
of my head. Things like three or four times of
the very least more likely across the entire transpopulation to
be homeless than people. And like you can just fucking
see that if you know trans people. It's like, yeah,
fucking everyone's spent a bunch of time being homeless, and like,
(33:15):
you know, that's just the conditions of this. And you
know this is the thing that like, as you the listener,
like it is possible for this. It doesn't have to
fucking be like this. Yeah, like it doesn't. You have
the power in your hands, like to keep people off
the street and like with a roof above their head,
and you could do this by clicking The links in.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
The description.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Are from our co op. Thank you for repeatedly mentioning
that aspect. I think also this does this class nymic
does shape the type of trans coverage you see two
quite a bit. We did sur importing one time on
the city of Ashville spending over a million dollars to
the Salvation Army, which is basically a queer and transphobic cult.
(33:59):
But that piece is reported very differently from if it
had been reported by, say a trans journalist who'd been
very well off their entire lives, you know, because a
lot of us people in our co op have either
been close to or been homeless before, and so we
were able to bring in the experience of knowing that
if you are a trans homeless person, the Salvation Army
(34:20):
isn't letting you in or is one of the worst
possible shelters you can end up in. And that piece
was written and read very differently because we were drawing
from that, from that on the ground experience.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah, on that note, I've I've written so many stories
that have been about just the poverty rates of trans
people and what we've all gone through. I used to
be a daily contributor for LGBTQ Nation. They were one
of the outlooks that I was trying to crank out
as many articles as they could for and the editors
(34:53):
lovely people. There no issues with them, lovely folks. They
just they don't They didn't have enough money to begin
with to pay me enough, so you're goin to do.
But I remember working on a story sometime like the
summer of last year for them where I was I
was writing about some new report that came out talking
(35:15):
about just like poverty rates, job discrimination rates of trans people.
And one thing I've noticed is, like David mentioned, there
is a huge disconnect between even if you have like
wealthier trans people write about an issue versus those who
are in poverty. Like a lot of the sources I
had for a specific article, I don't remember the headline
(35:38):
because I wrote like five hundred or goalster q Nation
last year, but a lot of the sources I used
for that article, and like other ones like it, are
like big nonprofits, And you know, obviously your mileage maybe
very depending on which nonprofit. But most of the folks
who like were writing these reports or who were doing
the press releases and stuff like that, you could just
(36:00):
kind of tell that they maybe did not have quite
the same experiences as say, trans people who have been homeless,
trans people who have had to deprive themselves of medical
care because they couldn't afford it, trans people who have
had to go without food because not enough money. And
it's almost like a lot of people who didn't have
(36:22):
to go through this stuff, like intellectualize it more. They
see it as like these abstract numbers and they know
it's bad, but they don't have that like individual connection.
Like even many of the nonprofit folks, a lot of
their friends, even their social circles are all going to
be on average, you know, I can't say for every
(36:42):
single person, obviously, like on average more wealthy, more stable,
they have family to back them up, they have plenty
of options, and I don't know, rambling a bit, but
there's just a disconnect, you know, whenever reaching out to
folks who won the birth law a little bit.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
One of the most the most expensive article that we
did Maddy cast News earlier last month was about Maryland
prisons and how they're basically torture chambers for trans women,
as most prisons are, but it seems like they're especially
bad in Maryland, you know, despite it being supposedly a
(37:24):
safe trans today you know, seventy percent Democrats. And that
was a kind of an example of just like how unprofitable,
how possible to not just unprofitable, because when you think unprofitable,
it's like, oh, you're not making money. It's not about that.
It's like if you're losing, like eighty percent of the
money you put into these articles because it takes so
many Like I'm a very strong believer of paying people,
(37:47):
you know, a living wage. So I was paying the
journalists like well over twenty five dollars an hour for
you know, dozens of hours of work, and that adds
up really fast. And then court feet, like pacer fees,
all these other costs are adding up and it ends
up being like around the thousand dollars for the single article.
And it's a really important article that you know, raise
(38:08):
a lot of awareness. Everyone in Maryland, in the trans circle,
they're talking about it. But at the same time, it's
basically a charity product, right, This is why I'm trying
to become a nonprofit because there's simply no other way
to be able to fund this stuff. There's no capitalist
model for reporting on trans women in prison. It's not
something that people are you know, like I definitely get
(38:28):
there's a lot of people who support us out of
the goodness of their hearts, and that's really nice, but
even that is not enough, because that's just how it is.
There's just not enough people who care about these issues. Sadly,
especially the more intersectional it is. You know, even a
lot of people in the queer community aren't as wory
necessarily about people in prison. They're more a worried about
people not in prisons. And you know, of course everyone matters,
(38:50):
but I think it's really important to focus on those
most intersectional issues because when you really think about it,
like prisons are basically, you know, where they do every
thing they want to do to transom and aren't in prison.
That's where they get to do all of it, and
no one's looking on, no one's watching them, no one's
holding them accountable. But yeah, I think it's basically a
complete failing of capitalism, Like it's there's definitely be some
(39:13):
outlets that, you know, maybe they could be doing better,
but at the same time, a lot of the time
that's basically, you know, be really shitty. The people are
closed down and neither of those are great options. And
personally I would close down, but I can't tell other
people what to do. And I think really it's a
systemic issue that society doesn't care about us, that the cists,
people who really should be funding these things and trying
(39:34):
to solve these issues, just pretend like we don't exist,
and you know, go out of their way to even
erase our presence even when we do, you know, create
national needs.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
You know, I think part of the difficulty of it, right,
and this is specifically the way the trends that she's
foctioned around class journalism are a microcosm. It's like the
most intense version of the stuff that's happening to the
entire journalism industry, right, or like, you know, part of
what we're seeing is like is just that it's been
the destruction of local news, right, And the product of
this is that the only people who can be journalists
(40:17):
are like a bunch of fucking rich dipshits and you know, like, yeah,
you've all fucking read like New York Times columnist is
like the platforming a genocide denier today, right, like that,
and that's that's sort of the product of this. And
it means that like unless like literally like people like you,
the fucking listener, And I guess this doesn't apply to
(40:38):
you if you're you know, like statistically a good number
of you are like you are also transgender, and you
make like fucking nine dollars an hour like running a
forklift or something like. This is not this is not
on you, like, I know much of you are gonna
be like, holy shit, actually give money these people. It's
like okay, but like this stuff is only possible if
(40:58):
people are actually fucking willing to support it, like until
we can like fundamentally change the way that the entire
political and economic system works in this country and in
this world. And until then, it's like yeah, like it's
this is a fucking problem for like us here too,
because you know, like again, like I got fucking lucky,
Like I am extremely dissimilar, Like I am the transfoman,
(41:19):
like one of the transfomens who you will hear from
the most. And I have like a stable job. I
haven't been homeless, and I haven't done sex work, and
this makes me completely unlike a huge portion of trans people,
especially transferms, right, And yeah, it's like, yeah, it fucking
colors the way I do this shit in ways that
like I don't see because like I haven't had to
like do this shit, and this is a real fucking problem.
(41:41):
The only way that it can not be like this
is if people are actually willing to support the people
who understand these things because they've fucking gone through it,
and so so your options are like all of our
stuff gets reported on by Jesse Singahl and we all
fucking die, or we fund's journalism if we fight them
(42:02):
and we all live in a fucking better world.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
My backup option if trans journalism doesn't work, you mentioned
sexpert is quite literally to write furry smut and hope
that pays.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
The last year, the Asheville Blade marked our tenth anniversary,
So I think I think that is worth mentioning too,
Like I think sometimes things and they truly are precarious,
they truly are difficult in some ways, they're only getting
more precarious and more difficult. But at the same time,
despite our journalists being arrested, despite being kind of like
(42:36):
targeted and ignored by a lot of liberals and even
some leftists in town, we're still here. We're still doing journalism.
We just put out a really powerful investigation about you know,
more yet more mouthfeasance in the police department. So so yeah,
like it can be done. It's not impossible, And as
tight as things are, there is also a lot of
resilience and we do get a lot of very genuine support.
(42:59):
I do think that's worth them sizing two. So, like,
there is strengthen there is some hope here. Yeah, and
you know, and again it's like it's it's not impossible.
It just requires it.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Requires a bunch of fucking work from the trans people
who are doing it. And then also it requires, you know,
putting on my fucking MPR pledge to my voice. It
requires viewers like you to you know, it requires people
to care enough about it to support it and make
it exist. And yeah, I think that's a that's a
(43:28):
kind of good note to start wrapping up. You have
anything else that you want to make sure you get
in before we move too plugs.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
I guess yeah, for me as as I'm also kind
of in that spectrum of like being a little bit
more privileged as far as trans women go financially. And
my message to other people who make especially since if
you're a SIST person you make over one hundred thousand dollars,
you're comfortable and you're feeling bad listening to this, you know,
go give a trans person money, Go give my relizine
(43:59):
my go give David Forbes money, like we have to.
We really need everyone to start pitching in, especially people
who aren't trends, and we really need like it's it's
literally life saving the money. Like and I think one
thing to consider is, you know, one thousand dollars to
someone who makes a lot of money is completely different
from one thousand dollars to someone who is like a
(44:21):
month away from being homeless.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
And twenty dollars functions like.
Speaker 4 (44:24):
That, Like yeah, twenty dollars is then like no, I
know so many people like one thousand dollars, like they'll go,
they'll spend a thousand dollars in a couple of weeks
on restaurants, right, And then there's people there's trans people
with a thousand dollars it's like change their life forever.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
To look on your's face, like the.
Speaker 4 (44:46):
No, there's people who spend and I don't even do
twenty thousand dollars a year on sushi having worked in
the service industry, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
I feel bad when I spend like twenty bucks on
Popeyes once a week, Like yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
So if you spend twenty thousand dollars a year on
two if you please spend nineteen thousand dollars a year
this year and said and give one thousand dollars to transperson.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
That's my advice for you.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Double the income of a transperson today. This is also like,
you know, part of what I was talking about with
like the Great Depression, Like we don't live in the
same economy that everyone else does, Like it is literally
a different fucking world. And the more fucked you are,
like down the fucking scale of like of like trans poverty,
the more it's like you literally like the reality that
(45:33):
like the people live in is just completely alien to you.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
It's like, what the fuck I want that kind of money?
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Fuck, you're a David Diah. Do you have anything else
that you want to say before you like wrap up?
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Please support trend journalists, please, dear God, Please, everyone I
know who is primarily a journalist for work is broke.
Need the money please toar God.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
Yeah I would, yeah, add to that. But another thing is, look,
uhould support trans journals because trans people deserve to, you know,
to be supported and to be able to make a living. Also, frankly,
we're really good at this, like generally as a whole,
like we have a lot more perspective I think on
how this healthscape social structure actually does and doesn't work,
(46:28):
and a lot more determination to actually tell the truth
in general, and so you know, dollars to the actual
blade for example, or to or Tamra or too maddicast,
Like they go to journalism. You know, they're not going
to like some baroque hierarchy of you know, of gentry
(46:48):
administrators or something or CEOs.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Like it goes to journalism.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
It goes to actual interesting reporting and views and things
that need to be said. So if people are even
just looking, if it's some journalism is something they care
about or think it needs to be stronger, this is
the way to do it.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Yeah, And like, like this is also a directly political
thing because like the word that you'll do, Like I
have literally watched it change the sort of political landscape.
Like that's just like a thing that happens, you know,
Like and I think we're all we're all very cynical
about sort of the power of like the truth to
do anything because it requires people to act on it.
But you know, if you don't know anything is happening,
(47:27):
it is not possible to act on something. Yeah, So,
like you know, you are simultaneously you are supporting, like
you are supporting trans people in like the most vicarious
position we've been in in fucking ages. You are like
supporting your supporting journalism. And you are not even poking
a stick. You are helping build a lance to like
stab into the side of the people who are like
(47:49):
destroying this world. And yeah, I think that's fucking important.
So if people want to support you, where do they go?
Where do they go?
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Go?
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Go, go go.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Yeah. So if you want to support me, go to
the Free radical dot org. That that that is my newsletter.
There's stuff to subscribe and and and give money. You
can do a free subscription, you know, especially for broke,
please do a free subscription, like we don't. I don't
need your twenty dollars. I'll give you my twenty dollars please.
(48:21):
And also I have a cofi if you know, need
to like a one time saying, it's mirror Lusine. I'm
the only one only mirrors and Losine on there. And
if you subscribe, you're supporting some of the only trans
anarchist national news coverage. Basically in every single article I write,
(48:41):
I try to find a way to shoot order anarchist
theory and what fucking I'm sucking. Like my first article,
I was like, hey, go check out crime thing, the
one who one I published yesterday. I just I went
on a whole like page long tangent where I'm like, okay, cool,
so this is what more liberal people are saying. But
go read Lorenzo O. Kombola Irvin, go read queryan anarchism,
(49:04):
Go read this shit, and yeah that's I just want
to shoehorn anarchist theory and get more people will be anarchists.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (49:13):
Yeah, So if you ever want to support maddiecast News,
to be clear, I don't take any income from the website,
actually having plant plans to put lots of money into it,
but all of your money will be going towards supporting
other trends journalists, So that's one way to contribute to
the cause. So or even if you just give me
your email, I appreciate that too. But my website is
(49:36):
maddiecast dot com and that's only one b So m
a d y cast dot com and round bluebliskuy too
with the same same website named and yeah, thank you.
People can find our co ops work at Ashville Blade
dot com and there's a giant link to our Patreon there.
For fifteen bucks a month, you can get a lovely
(49:56):
Gentry Tears mug, which we're particularly proud.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
Of it, so cool it rules.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
Thank you for the endorsement, And at the end of
each article we have addition to our Patreon a link
if folks just want to send us some one time support,
we'll certainly put that to use as well, and if
they would like to see some of my personal writings
about trans survival as well as some anarchists looks at
various periods of history Patreon dot com slash David Forbes
(50:26):
if if that is, if that is more of their
cup of tea.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
Satistically in our audience, I know there are a bunch
of you whose special interest either is or could be
medieval peasant uprisings. You were not going to find better
writing on medieval peasant up risings anywhere else. Yes, there
is a limit to the extent to which you can
actually talk about the structural problems that are happening, and
you can't fucking talk about how to solve them. And
(50:49):
this is also partially why I have a cogul journalists
like I kind of jokingly refuse to call myself a
journalist because, like I, fucking I refuse to be associated
with like all of those goddamn Atlantic mother fuckers who
institutional jobs to endanger trans people, like you know.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
But also around of fascist though that's.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
True, that's true, yeah, you know, because it's like we're
the ones actually fucking doing this shit. But also yeah,
like this is you know, to do my one, to
do my one Karl Marx quote. It's like, you know,
philosophy has hitherto only sought to describe the world. The
point is to change it. And that's a thing that
we could that like, we like have the power to
collectively do together. And that's something that like the New
(51:29):
York Times does not want you to know that you
can change things.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Now, Yeah, they to borrow a trem David has recently
gotten into my vocabulary. A bunch the gentry really fucking
do not like the idea of solutions. Their idea of
a solution is go vote for Pete Boudage egg, go
sign the Acal Years petition.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Yeah, I want, I want to read this this fucking
post that I saw for at Kencher Rights about the
New York Times. I think a lot about the top
New York Times editor who I told the historians were
warning were in a similar period to the ramp up
to the Holocaust, And maybe we could look back and
see what NYT had done wrong to not repeat his mistakes.
He shrugged, New York Times didn't really cover the Holocaust.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Oh my god, what, So don't support these people, support
the people who actually.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Do this shit, you know, like I.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
Go, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make a cut of comparison.
But it was like, at the time this shit was happening,
there was a bunch of very good coverage of the Holocaust,
of what was happening, but it was because it was
all happening from fucking like, because it was like largely
Jewish radicals who were doing it, All that shit fucking
got ignored, and shit that could have been fucking prevented wasn't.
And we don't have to live in a world where
(52:43):
that shit fucking happens, and we can make it not
be like that. But like the structural, the structural like
structural dature of the media is one of the ways
that this fucking happens. And we don't have to let
the New York Times do this again.
Speaker 3 (52:56):
No, And that's a good reminder there is another way
with journalism, you know. Ida Welles was able to detail
the extent and horror of American segregation and lynching, and
also called for people to shoot the clan. Yeah, this
is the you know, the modern idea that you have
to be detached, inevitably attached from pretty gentry perspective.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
You know, there's a world elsewhere, there's other ways to
do things.
Speaker 5 (53:22):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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It Could Happen Here News
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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